USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Newark > The history of Newark, New Jersey : being a narrative of its rise and progress, from the settlement in May, 1666, by emigrants from Connecticut to the present time, including a sketch of the press of Newark, from 1791 to 1878 > Part 11
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This monument is erected to the memory of Joseph Hedden, Esq., who departed this life the 27th of September, 1780, in the 52nd year of his age.
He was a firm friend to his country In the darkest times. Zealous for American Liberty In opposition to British Tyranny, And at last fell a victim To British Cruelty.
It is proper here to state, that the account given of Judge Hedden's martyrdom, widely different as it is from all versions heretofore published, is related on the authority of the martyr's grand-niece and nephew, with whom the author had personal interviews. It may be added, that Simon Hedden, Joseph's brother, was a man of great strength and ignorant of fear. He served three months in what was called "the whale boat service." In an obituary notice of the father of the Heddens, Joseph, senior, the Centinel of Freedom said, in November, 1798:
This venerable citizen (he was 96 years of age when he died) has from his youth sustained the character of an honest and upright man, and was much lamented by those who were acquainted with him. He had 13 children, 176 grandchildren, 106 great grandchildren, and 3 great great grandchildren.
It is a no less curious than amusing fact that this " father of a
100
RIVINGTON'S GAZETTE.
host," immediately upon rising every morning, and before dressing, took a generous draught of pure Jersey distilled liquor.
The royalist version of the incursions described appeared a few days afterwards, in Rivington's Royal Gasette, published in New York, January 29th, and ran as follows :
On Tuesday night the 25th instant, the rebel press at Elizabethtown were completely surprised and carried off by different detachments of the King's troops.
Lieut. Col. Buskirk's detachment-consisting of about 120 men from the Ist and 4th battalions of Brigadier General Skinner's brigade, with 12 dragoons under command of Lieutenant Stuart- moved from Staten Island early in the night, and got into Elizabethtown without being discor- ered between the hours of 10 and II. With little resistance they made prisoners : 2 majors 3 captains and 47 privates, among whom were 5 dragoons, with their horses, arms and accoutre- ments. Few of the rebels were killed, but several were wounded by the dragoons, though they afterwards escaped.
Major Lumm, of the 44th Regiment, marched from Powles Hook about 8 at night, having under his command the flank companies of that regiment, with detachments from the 42nd Anspach and Hessian corps in garrison in this city, and passing the rebel patrols on the banks of the Passaic, reached the town of Newark unperceived by the enemy, about an hour later than Col. Buskirk's arrival at Elizabethtown. Small parties were instantly posted to guard the principal avenues to the town, and Major Lumm seized possession of the Academy which the rebels had converted into a barrack. A momentary defence being attempted seven or eight of the enemy were killed. The remainder, consisting of 34 non commissioned officers and private men, were taken prisoners as were likewise a rebel magistrate remarkable for his persecuting spirit, and another inhabitant. The Captain who commanded in Newark made his escape. The Lieut. is said to be killed.
The services were performed without loss. The following are the names of some of the rebel officers brought to town on Tuesday last, from Newark: Joseph Haddon, a magistrate and commissoner for the loyalists' estates in New Jersey; Mr. Robert Natt, an acting commissary. From Elizabethtown : Maj. Eccles, of the 5th Maryland regiment ; Col. Bett, of the 4th Regi- ment, from Prince George Co. ; Mr. B. Smith, son of Peartise Smith ; Maj. Williamson and his brother.
With regard to the Academy above referred to, it may be remarked that after the ruins had for years served up-town urchin- dom as a pleasure place, the stones were removed and used in the erection of a dwelling which now presents a fashionable front on Washington place, a few houses west of Broad street, and nearly opposite the site of the old Academy.
The operations of the Lumm and Buskirk commands appear to have been simply of a piece with the practices which had been carried on for years, by the officers and soldiers in the service of King George. Writing from Newark, on the 12th of March, 1777, . a few months after the battle of Princeton, a highly respected citizen gave the following report of the local situation to Rev. William Gordon, the Congregationalist minister at Roxbury, Massa- chusetts :
IOI
TERRIBLE SCENES IN NEWARK IN 1777.
" The ravages committed by the British tyrant's troops in these parts of the country are beyond description. Their footsteps are marked with desolation and ruin of every kind. The murders, ravishments, robbery, and insults they were guilty of are dreadful. When I returned to the town, it looked more like a scene of ruin than a pleasant, well-cultivated village. One Thomas Hayes, as peaceable and inoffensive a man as in this State, was unprovokingly murdered by one of their negroes, who ran him through the body with his sword. He also cut and slashed his (Hayes') aged uncle in the same house, in such a manner that he has not yet recovered from his wounds. Three women of the town were basely ravished by them, and one of them was a woman of near seventy years of age. Various others were assaulted by them, who happily escaped their lewd purposes. Yea, not only the common soldiers, but officers went about the town by night, in gangs, and forcibly entered into houses, openly inquiring for women. As to plundering, whigs and tories were treated with a pretty equal hand, and those only escaped who were happy enough to procure a sentinel to be placed as a guard at their door. There was one Captain Nuttman, who had always been a remarkable tory, and who met the British troops in the Broad street with huzzas of joy. He had his house robbed of almost everything. His very shoes were taken off his feet, and they threatened hard to hang him. It was diligently circulated by the Tories, before the enemy came, that all those who tarried in their houses would not be plundered, which induced some to stay, who otherwise would have saved many of their effects by removing them. But nothing was a greater falsehood than this, as the event proved, for none were more robbed than those that tarried at home with their families.
" Justice John Ogden, whom you know, had his house robbed of everything they could carry away. They ripped open his beds, scattered the feathers in the air, and took the ticks with them ; broke his desk to pieces, and destroyed a great number of important papers, deeds, wills, &c., belonging to himself and others; and the more he entreated them to desist from such unprofitable and pernicious waste, the more outrageous they were. They hauled a sick son of his out of bed, whose life had been despaired of some time, and grossly abused him, threatening him with death in a variety of forms. The next neighbor to Mr. Ogden was one
8
102 "DIABOLICAL FURY" OF THE BRITISH SOLDIERY HERE.
Benjamin Coe, a very aged man, who, with his wife, was at home. They plundered and destroyed everything in the house, and insulted them with such rage, that the old people fled for fear of their lives; and then, to show the fulness of their diabolical fury, they burnt their house to ashes. Zophar Beach, Josiah Beach, Samuel Pen- nington, and others, who had large families and were all at home, they robbed in so egregious a manner, that they were scarcely left a rag of clothing, save what was on their backs. The mischief committed in the houses forsaken of their inhabitants, the destruc- tion of fences, barns, stables, the breaking of chests of drawers, desks, tables, and other furniture; the burning and carrying away of carpenters' and shoemakers' tools cannot be described.
" With respect to those who took protection and their oath, some of these they robbed and plundered afterwards; but the most general way in which they obtained the effects of such people, was by bargaining with them for their hay, cattle, or corn, promising them pay, but none whatever received anything worth mentioning. I might have observed that it was not only the common soldiers, who plundered and stole, but also their officers; and not merely low officers and subalterns but some of high rank were abettors and reaped the profits of their gallows-deserving business No less a person than General Erskine, Knight, had his room furnished from a neighboring house with mahogany chairs and tables ; a considerable part of which were taken away with his baggage when he went to Elizabethtown. Col. M'Donald has his house furnished in the same felonious manner, and the furniture was carried off as though it had been part of his baggage. But there is no end of their inhuman conduct. They have not only proved themselves cruel enemies, but persons destitute of all honor; and there is no hope of relief but by expelling these murderers, robbers and thieves from our country."
At this distance of time it requires considerable confidence and assurance to enter upon the hazardous duty of taking issue with any of the statements of Mr. Gordon's Newark correspondent. It would appear, however, that he erred somewhat as regards " one Captain Nuttman." Descendants of the Captain, who care more for truth than they do even for the historical memory of their ancestor, and who, singularly enough, are descendants also of the martyr-patriot Hedden, furnish statements which materially alter
IO3
JEFFERSON ON CORNWALLIS.
the status of the Captain in the above quotation. According to these statements, Captain Nuttman was quite advanced in years, at the time of the Revolution, and, though having held a captain's commis- sion in the Provincial militia, was altogether a very inoffensive man. His sympathies were doubtless with the British, but it is not believed that he was at all demonstrative. It is quite true that he and his family were plundered one night by the British, and another night by ghouls wearing the garb of patriots illustrators of Dr. Johnson's defi- nition of patriotism-the last refuge of scoundrels. Once they were despoiled, Captain Nuttman even of his silver shoe-buckles, and his wife of similar buckles and the gold rings on her fingers. The fact that his home was situated in the midst of a beautifully cultivated property on the banks of the Passaic, about where the Zinc Works are now located-the house is still standing-would seem to throw considerable doubt on the statement that he "met the British troops in the Broad street with huzzas of joy." As shown by our Council of Safety extracts, (July 2nd, 1777,) Captain Nuttman was among those of Essex who refused to take the "oaths of Abjuration and Allegiance agreeably to Law," and was removed to the Morris- town jail. He is not named in the proceedings of July 21st, 1777, among those whose petition to be removed back to Newark was granted by the Council. This is explained by descendants, who state that Captain Nuttman was liberated by express order of General Washington, probably because of the Captain's age and inoffensiveness. A chair of the Mayflower pattern, belonging to the Captain, is among the memorials at Washington's home and resting place, Mount Vernon, a gift from a grand-daughter of "the remarkable tory,' now residing in Newark. This chair, like another belonging to the Camp family, is said to have been used by Washington on one occasion, but where, when, or under what circumstances, are matters about which even the donor of the memorial is uninformed.
That the picture drawn by Mr. Gordon's correspondent of the reign of terror introduced by the Cornwallis occupancy of the neighborhood, is not on the whole over-drawn, there is ample proof. No less distinguished an authority than Thomas Jef- ferson, the illustrious Sage of Monticello, has described, over his own signature, the perpetration of similar ravages by the same troops, and upon his own plantation of Elkhill, in Virginia. Like
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THOMAS JEFFERSON ON BRITISH ARMY HORRORS.
Mr. Gordon's Newark correspondent, Mr. Jefferson did not blame alone the common soldiers, nor the lower officers, but placed Lord Cornwallis himself particeps criminis. "I do not mean," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "that he (Cornwallis) carried about the torch in his own hands, but that it was all done under his eye; the situation of the house in which he was, commanding a view of every part of the plantation, so that he must have seen every fire. I relate these things on my own knowledge, in a great degree, as I was on the ground soon after he left it. He treated the rest of the neighborhood somewhat in the same style, but not with that spirit of total extermination with which he seemed to rage over my possessions. Wherever he went, the dwelling houses were plundered of everything that could be carried off. Lord Cornwallis's character in England would forbid the belief that he shared in the plunder ; but that his table was served with the plate thus pillaged from private houses can be proved by many hundred eye-witnesses." "History will never relate," added Mr. Jefferson, "the horrors committed by the British army in the Southern States." He estimated that their six months' devastations in Virginia alone cost about three millions sterling.
Newark, as it is now bounded, does not share that halo of Revolutionary battle-field glory and renown which distinguishes other parts of New Jersey ; but Newark as it was bounded at the time of the great struggle for independence, furnished a part, at least, of one of the most heroically fought minor fields of the Revolution-the battle of Springfield. Up to 1793 the village of Springfield, as now embraced geographically, was partly in Newark and partly in Elizabethtown. The winter of 1779 and '80, as already remarked, was one of great severity in this section of country. The rivers and streams were mostly frozen solid, and snow covered the ground to the depth of several feet. Hence desultory movements of both British and American troops were seriously interfered with. Upon the opening of spring, however, a decided change took place in military operations. Washington's army lay encamped at Morristown. On the first of June, 1780, his whole command numbered three thousand seven hundred and sixty men. He had just received intelligence of the fall of Charleston, under General Lincoln, before the combined forces of the British naval and military commanders, Admiral Arbuthnot and Sir Henry
IO5
KNYPHAUSEN'S RECEPTION IN NEW JERSEY.
Clinton. Such was the condition of affairs in New Jersey, that refugees insisted that the people, weary of the terrible ravages of war, and of the compulsory requisition of supplies, were eager to return to their old British yoke. The royalist generals wrote to England that so great was the disaffection among the starved and half-clothed American officers and men, that one-half of them were ready to desert to the English, and the other half ready to disperse. The moment for replanting the British standard in the Jerseys was considered opportune. As events proved, nothing was more fallacious; a serious, quiet and undemonstrative attitude was mistaken then, as oftentimes before and since, as a popular will- ingness to sacrifice the dearest principle of life, human liberty. But the movement to replant proceeded, and under the leadership of a Lieutenant-General, the Baron Knyphausen, the Hessian commander.
At Connecticut Farms was stationed the Jersey brigade, under General Maxwell, and at Elizabethtown were three hundred more Jersey militia. On June 6th Knyphausen's troops, numbering about 5,000, moved from Staten Island to Elizabethtown, the intent being to surprise Maxwell's force, and, this succeeding, to push on to Morristown, and attack Washington's camp there. His advance guard met a very warm reception from the Jerseymen under command of Colonel Dayton. By his greatly superior force Knyphausen compelled Dayton to retreat. The latter was joined by the people, who spiritedly flew to arms, and was enabled to seriously harass Knyphausen's troops on their march to the Farms. The British came provided with seven days' provisions, and ample war materiel. Upon reaching Connecticut Farms, the smiling village was reduced to ashes, the church being given to the torch, likewise every dwelling in the place except one. The houses had previously been rifled and plundered, after the manner already described. Nor did the fiendish spirit of the hireling soldiery stop there. Hannah Caldwell, the lovely daughter of Justice John Ogden, of Newark, and the amiable and beloved wife of Rev. James Caldwell, sat in her room at the parsonage, whither she had some months before removed for greater safety from Elizabethtown. With her were her children, one a nursling in her arms. The maid apprised Mrs. Caldwell of the approach of a red-coat. "Let me see! Let me see !" cried her two-year old boy, as he ran to the window, followed
.
106
ASSASSINATION OF HANNAH CALDWELL.
by his mother. At that moment she was shot dead. The parsonage was fired, and it was with difficulty that the body was snatched from the flames. Mr. Caldwell was then at the Short Hills, near Springfield. Quite accidentally, the night following, he heard of the wanton and inhuman murder of his wife. By chance he overheard two men speaking of the tragedy. He questioned them and learned the facts. Next morning he repaired to the Farms, and found his worst information realized. It may well be believed that, in the words of a Revolutionary chronicler, the cruel murder of Mrs. Caldwell, and the wanton destruction of the village, produced a strong impression on the public mind, and " served to confirm still more the settled hate of the well-affected against the British government."
Maxwell retreated from Connecticut Farms to strong ground near Springfield. Here he arrested Knyphausen's approach. A regiment of Hessians, commanded by Colonel Wurmb, attacked him repeat- edly. Thrice did Maxwell's men charge upon the Hessian yagers with fixed bayonets, and retreat only upon the arrival of British reinforcements. Fifty of the yagers were killed or wounded. . Washington, meanwhile, having been promptly advised of the enemy's movements, advanced with the main body of his troops to Maxwell's aid. Upon discovering this, though his command was nearly double that of the Americans, Knyphausen turned back to Elizabethtown Point, leaving the Twenty-second English regiment at Elizabethtown. An American detachment followed in pursuit next morning, drove the Twenty-second from Elizabethtown, and returned unmolested. The gallant Colonel Dayton "received particular thanks " in general orders, and the bravery of the Jersey troops was liberally praised by the Commander-in-chief himself.
We come now to the battle of Springfield. The movement of some British troops up the Hudson River excited Washington's suspicion that the design of the enemy was to get in his rear. He, therefore, moved his camp to Rockaway bridge, where it arrived on the twenty-second of June. The post at Short Hills he confided to the care of two brigades under command of Major-General Greene. Early on the morning of the twenty-third, Knyphausen's command, consisting of two compact divisions, and numbering about six thousand infantry, cavalry and artillery, moved from Elizabethtown Point to Springfield. Such now was the American
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THE BATTLE OF SPRINGFIELD.
esprit de corps, that the King's troops had to fight their way almost inch by inch. The enemy's right column, before it could drive Major Lee's dragoons from one of the bridges over the Passaic, was compelled to ford the stream. His left column was stubbornly resisted by Dayton's Jersey regiment, and by its overwhelming numbers alone was Knyphausen's force able to press on. General Greene prepared for action, but Knyphausen feared, or at all events failed, to engage him, though Knyphausen's troops were drawn up and had begun a heavy cannonade. At Springfield they made a stand of several hours' duration, and, after reducing the town to ashes, and plundering its people of their effects, began their retreat to Elizabethtown Point. As upon the retreat from Connecticut Farms, the British flanks and rear were greatly annoyed with a galling fire from the American skirmishers the whole day back. The total loss of the British was unknown, though fifty more of the Hessian yagers were killed or wounded; the latter including one colonel, two captains and one lieutenant. The same night, Knyphausen recrossed to Staten Island.
General Greene said, in his report of the action to the Com- mander-in-chief: "I have the pleasure to inform your excellency that the troops who were engaged behaved with great coolness and intrepidity, and the whole of them discovered an impatience to be brought into action." He added that " the good order and discipline they exhibited in all their movements, do them the highest honor.' With regard to the object of the enemy s expedition General Greene confessed himself at a loss to determine. "If," said he "it was to injure the troops under my command, or to penetrate further into the country, they were frustrated. If the destruction of this place, it was a disgraceful one." "I wish," said he in conclusion, " every American could have been a spectator; they would have felt for the sufferers, and joined to revenge the injury."
Washington, himself, in communicating the result to Congress, made the following remarks :
"The conduct of the enemy giving us reason to suspect a design against West Point, on the 2Ist, the army except two brigades and the horse, (left under the command of General Greene, to cover the country and our stores,) was put in motion to proceed slowly towards Pompton. On the 22nd it arrived at Rockaway bridge, about II iniles from Morristown. The day following the enemy moved in force from Elizabethtown to Springfield. They were opposed with good conduct and spirit, by Major-Generals Greene and Dickinson, with the Continental troops, and such of the militia as had assembled. But, with their superiority of numbers, they of course
108
THE SPIRIT OF '76 ABLAZE IN THE JERSEYS.
gained Springfield. Having burnt the village, they retired the same day to their former position. In the night they abandoned it, crossed over to Staten Island and took up their bridge. I beg leave to refer Congress to General Greene's report for particulars.
The enemy have not made their incursion into this state without loss. Ours has been small. The militia deserve everything that can be said, on both occasions. They flew to arms univer- sally, and acted with a spirit equal to anything I have seen in the course of the war."
Thus, instead of finding a whole people eager to return to their allegiance, and ready to huzza over the replanting of the royal standard, the British and their mercenary allies under Knyphausen encountered a citizen soldiery and a population ready to shed their hearts' blood rather than yield the rights described in the Declara- tion of Independence as being endowed of God. They found men half-starved, half-clad, and miserably accoutred, it is true ; but they found also, to their chagrin, the same grandly heroic spirit which has given to history such chivalric characters as Arnold von Winkelreid, at Sempach ; William Tell, in the Alpine fastnesses of Switzerland ; William Wallace, in the Scottish mountains, and the men of Acton, at the old North Bridge of Concord. In a word, the spirit of '76 was found to be still ablaze in the Jerseys. The torch of the hireling incendiary served a dual purpose ; in reducing to ashes the house of the impassioned lover of liberty, it simultaneously set aflame in his heart that fire which nothing but death could quench. "Liberty and Independence " was a sentiment which had wound its tendrils round the heart of the Jerseyman. For that sentiment he stood ready to encounter the hardest of hardships, the bitterest of persecutions, and even death.
One American, in particular, bore a part in the fight at Springfield, which richly deserves to live in history, there to be grouped with the brave and the true of all times and of all nations. He came of a lineage ennobled, not by kingly favors, but by the patent of the Great Creator-a lineage distinguished in an older hemisphere for a devotion to faith and principle which rose sublimely superior to all considerations of worldly honor, ease and comfort. He was of French Huguenot stock, which sought shelter in Scotland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; but which soon had to fly thence to Ireland, owing to the cruel persecutions of Claverhouse. His name-it deserves to be spoken with reverence, and written, as it is, in letters of veneration-was JAMES CALDWELL. Caldwell was a Virginian by birth, his parents having come to the New World from the County Antrim, Ireland, in the early part of the
CHARACTER OF CALDWELL, THE "REBEL HIGH PRIEST." 109
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